


A Continuous Cutting Motion

by Varanu



Series: The Sexth House [4]
Category: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Casual Racism, Cathartic Violence, Colonialism, Dubious Consent, F/M, Knifeplay, Rough Sex, Safewords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-08 00:53:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10374141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varanu/pseuds/Varanu
Summary: Alessia sees the greatness in Nerevar. He will cut the world into a better shape, and make the sky run red with fire. But first he must learn the true nature of revolution and its downfalls, and the Slave Queen knows exactly how to teach him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Zinitrad, whose 1st era Cyrod is still my favorite.

In the west they use horses. Nerevar isn’t used to them; the way they paw at the ground and toss their heads, manes flying like the warrior’s crest on his own head. The grassy smell of their shit, different from the sour smell of guar shit. The way their hooves kick dust onto his legs and sandals, and onto their own short-haired coats, turning them all the same: a troop of yellow-gray beasts plodding up the winding trails of the Velothi—no, the  _ Valheith _ —Mountains. 

He isn’t used to that name yet, either. The Northmen rewrote all the maps, after the war. 

But he likes the smell of horses, and their sweet breaths, and the softness of their noses. And he prefers their company to that of the Northman caravan owner, or the other caravan guards, and definitely to that of his father back at home, the spineless traitor. Not that he can go home, anyway. There had been some hard words. 

After the pass, the road becomes wide and flat, and takes on the distinct marks of being made by hands instead of sorcery. Nerevar’s contract ends once they reach the highlands on the western side, but he kicks around for a week and then picks up another gig, headed further into the river valley. He’s always wanted to see White-Gold Tower, whether controlled by the Ayleids or by their zealot freedslaves. 

And he wants to see the slaves that can take down an empire like that, bloody and vicious. He has an interest in these things. He has an ambition. 

#

The Northman jarls here dress in silk instead of furs. Otherwise they are exactly like their brethren in his homeland: shaggy, boisterous, overbearing. Stamping on the faces of elves with their furry boots. Nerevar tries not to look too hard at the half-built longhouses and the dragon totems stuck all over everything. He’s getting good at making friends with horses. 

The locals are more interesting anyway. The elves all have the same downcast aura as Nerevar’s kindred, but the short, sun-browned rivermen are cheerful and chatty, and as colorful as tropical birds. They decorate themselves with elaborate scars and tattoos, and pierce their ears and lips and cheeks. Most of the adults bear battle scars as well—divots from slashes, stars from punctures, truncated limbs—and distinctive palm-sized tattoos or brands on their left shoulders. At first Nerevar thinks these show tribal affiliation. Then he recognizes the symbol of a prominent Ayleid house, and with a queer chill realizes they are marks of former ownership. Almost all have been slashed through with black or red ink, or overwritten with words in the Ayleidoon alphabet.

One woman in particular catches his eye: a young woman with strikingly green eyes, and the words AL and ESH written over and over in curving blue lines on every bit of exposed skin, even her face. The words run down her neck and into her dress, and Nerevar lets his gaze linger for a moment, wondering. When she catches him staring, she scowls and defiantly displays her tattooed palms. Nerevar turns away, disquieted. This is not his land. He is a stranger here. 

But he is being paid well, and he still wants to see the tower. 

Nerevar gets his first glimpse of White-Gold Tower at sunset, early in the month of Rain’s Hand. As they descend into the valley, the air grows damp and swirling mists rise from the earth like wraiths. But toward dusk the western sky clears to reveal a smooth column stretching from earth to sky, silhouetted black against orange-gold. The sight strikes Nerevar to the heart: the grandeur of it, the height, a shape as old as the world.

After that the tower is an inconstant friend on their way toward the city itself. The rice terraces give way to lush floodplains, and finally to a lake as wide and blue as the waters of Oblivion itself. The land around its shore has been blasted, and not that long ago. Ancient trees lie broken on the earth where some power lifted and flung them like toys. Around their already-rotting hulks sprout new trees, the thickest as slender as Nerevar’s wrist.

Nerevar’s second contract ends at the water’s edge, in a town of shattered marble manors called Filiferrin. It stinks of fish and water-weeds. As soon as he collects his payment, Nerevar books passage to the tower in a three-hulled catamaran that slices through the waves like a serrated knife. He peers over the bow, but the central isle is obscured by innumerable red and yellow sails. All around, cormorants dart from spindly rafts like ungainly falcons, and return to retch fish into woven baskets.

Particolored tents crowd the isle’s shore, arranged in clusters like tribal Velothi yurts. But no yurt was ever so brightly dyed, painted with so many symbols, draped with shells and feathers and flowers by a people who had evidently never met an adornment they didn’t like. Even the guy-lines bear tiny bells that shiver and release showers of cold dewdrops as Nerevar brushes past. 

The rustling silk walls give way to shattered pillars as Nerevar approaches the city itself. He pauses to watch bare-footed women dance on razor blades and display their unharmed soles to ululating worshippers. The din of human voices dizzies him, and he leans against the city wall to recover, resting his head against the cool stone. Then a heavy, bewitching scent steals over him, and he jerks and looks up. Around and above him hang dozens of white trumpet-shaped flowers as long as his hand, rooted to the wall.

Once within the city proper, Nerevar gains an entourage of small children who follow him at a careful distance, pointing and chattering. He catches the word  _ kaketiu _ over and over, but can't make out anything else. All around him, yellow hibiscus blooms from crumpled marble towers, dripping over mosaics of winged bulls, or shining figures that brandish severed elf heads, or simply strange patterns, tiled or fractal. Every surface bears a different idol, every corner a shrine. To his surprise, he even finds an icon of Veloth Weeping nailed to a doorpost, adorned with feathers. As he watches a woman emerges from the doorway. She kisses her fingers and touches them to the icon as she passes, in one seamless motion. Nerevar steps aside, and then makes the correct obeisance to the icon, touching his breast and forehead. Behind him he hears a murmur, and turns to see the children mimicking him, their eyes wide and solemn. 

The children scatter and the clamor of the city fades as Nerevar reaches the gardens surrounding White-Gold Tower itself. Birds chirp sweetly in the fruit trees, amidst the soft clicking and tinkling of bamboo and bronze chimes. Beneath his sandals, narrow-faced mongooses slip from shadow to green shadow in pursuit of brilliant snakes. The guards keep a close eye on him as he wanders. Nerevar tries to ignore this. He’s not going to  _ steal _ anything, or hurt the children he can hear shouting and chasing one another among the dripping trees.

Up close, the tower is magnificent. Hundreds of thousands of colored stones and shells plaster its base, reds and greens and purples and blues crashing together in eclectic and vibrant array. Above, the riot of color grows sparser and stops, leaving the naked tower itself rising into thin air, a seamless construction of translucent fluted marble. Warm sunlight glitters from the thousands of fine golden lines that curl across its surface. For a moment Nerevar mourns the sorcerers that created it. 

He is walking about the tower’s base when two women in red and gold silk approach. To his untrained eye they are identical. They wear smooth bronze helmets with cheek and nose guards, inlaid with pink mother-of-pearl, and decorated with strings of colorful beads. Their voluminous skirts are slit up to the hips, exposing bare, muscular thighs. Light scarves cover their mouths, bronze bracers their forearms, and each of them bears a spear. 

“Veloth elf,” one of them says, in his own language. “What do you here?” 

Nerevar is surprised that they identify him at all, until he remembers his hair. No Ayleid styles their hair like he does, shaved at the sides and spiked up with resin. But out of courtesy he answers in their own language, or what he has picked up on his travels. 

“Just admiring the tower,” he says, or thinks he says. 

They exchange glances. Then the first one says, haltingly, “When you admire a thing for long enough, sometimes it admires you back. The Holy of Holies commands your presence.” 

“The Holy of—what? Why?” 

“Now,” she says, and they lower their spears. 

Nerevar considers bolting. But where would he run? He is an outlander here, conspicuous and unwelcome; he would be caught in a moment, and likely slain. He holds up his hands and allows them to escort him into the tower itself, past the dull, shattered remnants of what had once been legendary doors of stone and starlight. The scent of flowers and the squeals of the children follow them in. 

#

Horse-sized chunks of masonry litter the floor inside the tower, rising like white islands from a sea of humans. Prodded by the twins, Nerevar picks his way past ancients smoking long-stemmed pipes, amputees singing in ragged polyphony, children beating on tambourines and running away from their mothers. He dances to avoid a half-naked toddler, and nearly trips down a few shallow steps. There he finally looks away from his feet long enough to glimpse the wide, circular dais that dominates the room, and the Holy of Holies. 

White and grey moths flutter from her red silk robes, and rest on the beaded horns of her headdress. More beads and iridescent beetle shells dangle from her clothing. She does not look up at Nerevar’s approach, intent on a set of papyrus sheets laid before her, tracing the line of curling text with one finger. She sets aside a page, and Nerevar is struck by the sudden grace of her slender brown wrists slipping from layers of sleeves, her small hands adorned with heavy rings of carnelian and silver filigree. 

The twins nudge him forward with the hafts of their spears. Nerevar takes a step, and drops to one knee. One of the twins rests her spear on his left shoulder, and the wooden shaft scratches his cheek, the bronze blade inches in front of his face. He hears the rustle of papyrus being set aside, and then the rustle of silk as the Holy of Holies rises. 

With slow, careful, silk-dragging steps, she makes her way to the edge of the dais. Kneeling, Nerevar has an excellent view of her bare feet, red-painted toenails, and the bronze rings on her ankles and toes. She stops before him, then squats and tilts his face up with both hands. Nerevar consciously relaxes his expression, allowing her to turn his head left and right. She runs her fingers down the bridge of his crooked nose, raising one cattail eyebrow, and Nerevar shrugs. Northmen have hard fists. She smiles, and then tilts his head back even further and wrenches his jaw open to inspect his teeth. 

Nerevar jerks away, but she does not try it again. Instead she touches the brooch that fastens his traveling cloak, and then beckons, palm up. He hesitates, then unfastens it. His cloak slips to the floor as he sets the brooch in her hand, and he looks away as the Holy of Holies pins the symbol of his House to her dress. 

“Not bad,  _ serjo _ elf,” she finally says, in his language. She laughs.  _ “Serjo kaketiu. _ I saw you walking around the tower. Around and around. What were you thinking about, hmm?” 

Her speech is impressively fluid; her accent, oddly charming. Nerevar struggles to regain his composure. 

“It’s magnificent,” he says. “The entire city. Beautiful.” He takes a breath, tries to slow his beating heart. “Almost as beautiful as its queen.”

She straightens. The twins grab Nerevar by the arms and hoist him upright. Nerevar stiffens and then forces himself to relax. 

“Take the elf to my chamber,” she says, switching back to her own language. Her nose wrinkles. “Bathe him first.” 

To her  _ chamber? _ But the twins’ hands are tight on his arms. Nerevar inclines his head, and allows them to march him away. When he looks back over his shoulder, he sees the Holy of Holies bundling up his abandoned cloak between those small, dextrous hands.

# 

In the garden lies a secluded pool of dark mossy stone and clear water, surrounded by red-flowering allspice. The twins strip Nerevar of his weapons and dreugh-shell armor. He backs away before they can touch his clothing, undoing the ties himself. They watch as he undresses and lowers himself into the cool, waist-deep water. The stone beneath his toes is slick with algae.  

It is a pleasure to bathe, and Nerevar relishes it as slowly as he dares. A basket of fibrous  _ luffa _ sponges sits beside the pool, and a bottle of grainy, semiliquid soap. Nerevar glances at the twins, then shakes some of the soap onto a sponge. The sponge foams on contact with the water, and the rough texture feels good on his skin, washing away the dust and sweat of the road. 

He’s unsure how he feels about the Queen’s invitation. On the one hand, he feels a trifle ill-used. She took his brooch. She checked his  _ teeth. _ And he likes to be asked, not commanded. But on the other hand… well. Time was that women couldn’t keep their hands off him. But that was before the war, when he’d carried more flesh, and fewer scars on that flesh. 

Perhaps she just prefers elves. Some human women do. He closes his eyes, remembering the caress of her thumbs across his cheekbones. And she was a slave once, maybe a favorite. How else would she know his language? Perhaps she’s had this sort of encounter with his kind before. Perhaps she misses it. The thought makes him smirk, and he turns away from the twins before they can see it and become suspicious.

Nerevar finishes up and starts to hoist himself out of the pool, but the twins block his path with their spears. 

“What?” he says. 

“Hair, too,” one of them says. 

“Unless you have shalk resin for me to get it back up…” 

They stare at him. 

“Pine resin?”

The other twin leans over. “Your hair stinks like horse shit,” she says, slowly and clearly. “Wash it.”

Nerevar grumbles but sinks back into the water. 

It actually feels good to wash his hair, though he feels uncommonly naked with his damp hair flopped against his scalp. They dress him in a loose white linen tunic, and assure him that his belongings will be returned to him  _ after _ he has served the Queen’s pleasure. Nerevar shrugs and allows himself to be herded up the stairs. 

Before long he is breathing hard, and has a new regard for the twins and their enormous thighs. How in hell is that pretty little Queen going to make it up here? Perhaps she has a levitation spell. Nerevar is considering this when the twins unlock a door—the last door, they’ve reached the top—and shove him in. 

They shut the door before Nerevar can protest. He tries the door handle—locked—and then begins to measure the room with his stride. Eight tall windows let in the sky, two of them ajar. A ramp spirals around the wall to a trapdoor in the ceiling, also locked. A bed dominates one side of the room, wide enough for two or three. Nerevar tests the mattress with his hand, but does not sit. Instead he goes to one of the open windows and looks down. Far below, boats scull across the water like beetles. 

He wonders how long the Queen plans to keep him here. He’ll get a chance to ask, surely? He hasn’t come all this way to wind up a stud in a foreign queen’s harem. Although it’s not as if he has any leverage. He can't exactly fight his way to the ground bare-handed. He could take the Queen hostage, threaten to snap her neck. But if he did something like that he’d have to fight his way out of the city, out of the  _ country… _ No, best to go through with it. 

Behind him, the door clicks. Nerevar turns around. 

A woman steps in, shuts the door behind her, and leans against it, smiling at him. Her skin is the light, appealing color of a walnut’s shell, and her robes are blue, paler than the sky that surrounds them. Her hair is dark brown, the color of freshly-turned earth and hangs to her waist, curling like a cloud. Her eyes are dark as well, and in them he recognizes the intensity of the Queen’s regard. 

His loins stir, as if he were still an adolescent. 

“Your Highness,” he says in his own language, and bows to her. “I am at your service.”

“Oh, I like  _ you,” _ she says. “What’s your name?”

“Nerevar Mora,” he says. “And you?” 

“They call me the Paravant,” she says, almost shyly. “And First, and Highest, and Holy of Holies. They love me very much, my people.” 

“Paravant,” he says, tasting the word strange on his tongue. 

“But here, and now,” she says, and her voice dips low so that he finds himself leaning in to hear her. It is a trick used by common whores, but she does it so charmingly that he is captured. “You may call me Al-Esh.” 

_ Al-Esh. _ She comes toward him, delicately places her four fingers and thumb in the center of his chest, and pushes him backwards. Nerevar allows himself to be pushed, stepping back until the bed catches him and he sits down. She climbs into his lap, and he crushes her to his body and lets himself fall back, so that they lie side by side. Al-Esh laughs, and Nerevar covers her laugh with a kiss. She shoves him away, smiling. 

“Impatient,” she says. 

“Says the woman who kidnaps strangers for her bed.” 

“You’re no stranger, Nerevar Mora,” she says, and a chill goes down his back. “But do I hear reluctance? You don’t wish to be here?” 

“Your Highness,” he says. 

“Al-Esh.” She lays a finger on his lips. “Truly. If you do not wish to be here, you may go, and I will give you a purse of silver for your trouble.” 

Strangely, that makes his mind up for him. He has nowhere pressing to be, after all, no one to meet, nothing to do but enjoy an unexpected opportunity. Nerevar slides his hand into her hair. 

“I do wish,” he says, and kisses her again.

They kiss for some time, only kiss, and she runs her hands along his stubbly scalp and threads her fingers through his hair. Nerevar lets his hand wander from her waist to her hip, and back. She makes a small, sweet sound when he cups her breast through the thin fabric of her robe, and wraps her leg over him. The hem of her robe slides up her thigh and Nerevar slides his hand after it. He licks his middle finger and then fumbles it between her legs. When he works it inside, Al-Esh presses her mouth to his shoulder and moans, her warm flesh enclosing the digit like a promise. 

After some time she sits up, and pulls her robe over her head. Despite her youth, Nerevar can tell she is a mother, perhaps several times over. Ragged silver stripes fan across her hips and belly, and more stretch down her drooping breasts. She is scarred and worn and yet lovely in her ripeness, like a melon or a root vegetable still fresh and damp from the earth. 

On her shoulder she bears the medallion of a slave brand. 

“Lie back,” Al-Esh says, and makes a shooing gesture. 

Nerevar obeys, unthinking. His cock makes a little tent of the white fabric of his tunic. The tunic’s hem brushes just above his knees. Does she intend to push it up and ride him? 

She does straddle him, a fistful of patterned silk scarves in her hand. Her knees brush his ticklish sides, and her breasts swing past his face like pendulums. She ties Nerevar to the four bedposts, hand and foot. Nerevar shifts his weight beneath her, his heart beating fast with anticipation and a little anxiety. As she ties his wrists, her long dark hair falls across his face, and Nerevar breathes in the scent of jasmine, and orchid, and oleander. 

She is good at knots. Once she has climbed off, he tests his bonds and finds them comfortable, but quite secure. He returns his attention to her and finds her standing at the foot of the bed. In her hand is a small silver knife, the length and width of two fingers together. 

She lifts it to her lips and smiles. 

“If you panic,” she says, in a light singsong voice, “the word is  _ Sard.” _

#

Nerevar does not panic. Although he comes very close, several times.

Al-Esh cuts the tunic off his body—cuts it, the knife sliding through the white linen like water—and throws the pieces into the corners of the room. Then she climbs over him and straddles his belly. Her pubic hair is soft, just below his sternum. She rubs herself against him, her cunt hot on his skin, leaving a little damp trail. Then she puts her hands on his shoulders. The knife’s hilt presses into his flesh, caught between his shoulder and her palm, and as she shifts the point settles a little closer to his jaw. 

The hairs on the back of Nerevar’s neck prickle, but Al-Esh kisses him, so he shuts his eyes and focuses on her lips and the faint, fruit-wine sweetness of her tongue. She takes his lower lip between her teeth, and Nerevar stretches upward to kiss her more deeply. 

“Careful,” she says. Her lips brush his own as she speaks. She straightens and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, the hand that holds the knife. The clear white light from the windows shivers along the blade and sparks on a tiny irregularity in the edge. “Don’t move unless I tell you. Don’t even twitch if you can help it. I don’t want to kill you by accident.”

“What about intentionally?” he says. It’s a joke, or at least he thinks he means it to be a joke, until she laughs and his mouth goes dry. Too late he remembers that he is in bed with a woman who made her name by killing elves. Discreetly he tests the bonds again. They are still quite secure.

Well, she wouldn’t have given him a safe word if she meant to kill him. He wanted her to laugh. Didn’t he?

She slides the palm of her free hand across his nipple. With her other hand she draws a long line down the center of his chest, and then a series of short, straight ones radiating down from his collarbone. Her breasts squash against him as she bends to put her mouth on them. She moves up to kiss his throat, then runs her tongue along the edge of his ear and nips the point of it between her teeth.

“Elf ears,” she murmurs. Her breath tickles his ear, and Nerevar resists the urge to shake his head. 

“You expected something else?” he says. 

“You’re from the East,” she says, instead of answering his question. “Over the mountains. What are they called? The Velothi?”

The name thuds into him like an arrow. “Not anymore,” Nerevar says.

“How do you feel about that?”

“How do you  _ think,” _ he says, and then breaks off, drawing a long ragged breath as without looking, without even a fucking glance she slides the edge of the knife down the inside of his left arm. His skin parts effortlessly beneath it, leaving behind a stinging line from shoulder to elbow. His heart hammers in his chest. There’s an artery there, not very deep, and if she had slipped…

“Not good, I take it,” she says, as if nothing has happened, and Nerevar realizes abruptly what she is at. She is toying with him. She is  _ teasing _ him. That little scene in her court, this entire farce, all of it designed to demonstrate her dominion over him, the dominion of Niben-men and Northmen over Ayleid and Chimer, of men over elves. This is a darker game than Nerevar anticipated, and he hesitates, holding the safe word in his mouth.

But Al-Esh sits up, rocking her hips against his belly, and then reaches behind her with her free hand and closes it around his half-hard cock. Her fingers are warm and tight on his shaft and Nerevar reminds himself not to thrust into her grip.

“But this is good,” she says. She nudges his other shoulder with the knife, pricking the skin. “Or isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Nerevar says. The hoarseness of his own voice surprises him. Al-Esh draws her hand back and once again he fights the urge to follow it with his hips. His arm tickles. He glances at it just as a drop of his own blood swells and then rolls down across his skin, leaving a red track.

She could have cut the artery, so easily. But she didn’t, and the adrenaline is fading fast. She is teasing, he reminds himself. Only teasing. And if she wants to demonstrate her power over an elf, well, she wants to get fucked by one as well. He has that over her.

Nerevar swallows and licks his lips, and says, “Please.”

“Please…?”

“Touch me,” he says, and then sucks in his breath as Al-Esh turns with the knife in hand. “Wait—”

“Shh,” she says. She dismounts and rummages under the bed, then comes up with a pot. She scoops a glob of something onto her fingers, and wipes it onto Nerevar’s cock. It’s cold for a moment and then warms and becomes greasy when she wraps her hand around his cock. The mattress shifts beneath them as she slides back onto the bed and starts to stroke him. Her deft fingers slide up his shaft, caressing the head with her slick palm, and then down again, and up.

The now-bloody knife nudges his hip, and then lightly, delicately, traces a little wandering line down the outside of his thigh. He holds his breath and then lets it out. The sting of the knife mingles with the pleasure condensing in his loins. Nerevar cranes his head as best he can, watching the hair-thin line grow red.

Al-Esh draws another series of short lines beside the long one, and then once again bends down to lick the oozing blood away. Her warm, wet tongue soothes his stinging skin, and for a moment he thinks about asking her to put her mouth on his cock as well. Then he imagines the knife… no, not worth it. 

But then Al-Esh crawls between his knees and Nerevar’s heart quails. She places her free hand at the base of his cock, and the one with the knife on his thigh. The knife’s point hovers worryingly close to his balls. He suspects fear is making it appear much larger than it actually is. 

“I saw an Ayleid castrate a slave, once,” she says, in an offhand tone. She gestures with the knife, short and sharp. Nerevar can’t keep from flinching. “Just for fun, you understand. Off in one swipe, cock and balls both, and laughed as the poor man bled to death.”

_ Sard, _ Nerevar thinks, and licks his dry lips to say it. But she pulls her hair over her shoulder and slides her lips over the head of his cock, and the word evaporates into a sigh, a moan, as without meaning to he thrusts upward. Al-Esh sucks his cock down, down to the dark ring of his circumcision scar—he gasps as her lips cover it—and then lets it slip back out. Nerevar lifts his head to watch better, and then lets it drop back. She is… she’s very good at this. The knife’s hilt still presses into his thigh, but he can feel her rolling his balls in her hand, her tongue swirling around the ridge of his cock, the gentle tugging on his shaft. 

“You’re very brave,” Al-Esh comments, at last. She sits up and wipes her mouth. The rouge has worn off her lips. “Are you really not concerned?”

“You gave me a word,” Nerevar manages to say. It comes out a little strangled, and he swallows. He can’t think straight, not past the pounding of his own heart. He pulls at the scarves that bind his wrists again. His shoulders ache. He wants, needs to wrap his fists into her hair and fuck that sly, smiling little mouth until her eyes water.

“And who says I will obey it?” The flat of the knife slaps his leg, just below the hipbone. Nerevar forces himself not to buck his hips, but desire throbs through his loins. “I am the Queen here, and you are a lowly caravan guard. I could gut you and throw your body into the lake.”

With a sinking, despairing feeling Nerevar realizes that she is right. The word she gave him is meaningless; she has no reason to spare him, and perhaps no desire to. He was lost the moment he stepped into this chamber. He swallows, gathering his courage.

“It would be your loss,” he says.

“Of what?”

“Of a really great lay,” he says, and then sucks in his breath as she touches the knife to his upright cock. She rocks it across his skin— _ blunt edge, not sharp, thank you thank you thank you _ —and the sight makes him paradoxically harder, terror mingling with desire.

“Really,” she says, and clambers up over him. For a moment he thinks she intends to make him prove it, to bring herself down and finally ride him. But instead Al-Esh stretches her body across his, soft and warm, until her ass nudges his cock. Her hair falls over her shoulder onto his skin. She shows him the knife.

“Blunt side,” she promises. “Don’t move.”

Before Nerevar can respond, Al-Esh turns the knife in her hand and he feels a cold, hard line press into his throat. The blunt edge, she wasn’t lying and Nerevar thanks a dozen of his patron ancestors for that. He doesn’t move, doesn’t swallow, hardly even dares to breathe. She leans over the knife and kisses him, sliding her tongue between his lips and teeth. Nerevar tries to keep the motion of his jaw as minimal as possible, hating every moment. He is an idiot. He did this to himself, allowed himself to be herded into her power and cozened with the promise of safety. He allowed himself to be bound. 

And he is still so ridiculously, hopelessly, helplessly aroused.

“Nerevar Mora,” she says, then. Her fingers brush his cheek, and she turns his head very slightly to face her. There’s a small, worried line between her dark eyebrows. “You are angry.”

Nerevar does not speak. He cannot speak. He swallows, and feels the knife bob against his throat.  _ Still alive. Still alive. _

“You blame me for doing this to you,” she says. “And you blame yourself for allowing it to be done. Your heart cries out for a vengeance that your mind and body cannot provide, so it turns inward and devours its rage, like a dog eating its own vomit. It was common among us, once. We called it  _ han.” _

Nerevar does not dare to look away from her. He cannot breathe. His pulse throbs in each stinging cut. Each heartbeat might be his last. Is she going to kill him, or isn’t she?

“You don’t understand,” she says, at last. She sits up and takes the knife from his throat, and Nerevar allows himself a long, deep breath. He is surprised to find that he is shaking. With rage or terror, he doesn’t know. But shaking. He closes his bound hands and opens them again and wishes that he were anywhere but here, anywhere but spread-eagled under this woman.

“I understand a little,” he says. Trying to be sympathetic, to win a little mercy. “This is what you felt, right? Why you had your rebellion?”

“It almost  _ killed _ our rebellion,” she says. “We worshipped our own suffering. We ate our own bitterness, and multiplied it, and we became very, very good at hating. The Ayleids, each other, it didn’t matter. But I found the cure.”

“Cutting up elves,” he says, and then flinches as she gestures with the knife. “Al-Esh, please—”

“So impertinent!” she says. “You’re one of those who jokes to hide fear, aren’t you?”

“Al-Esh!”

“Aren’t you?” 

“Yes!” Nerevar cries. “Yes, I’m afraid. Is that what this is about, is that what you want?”

“In part,” she says. “And you. What do you want, Nerevar Mora?”

The silk scarves pinion his limbs. Her warm weight holds him down. Nerevar swallows. 

“I want to be free,” he says. “And I want to fuck you. But not like this. Not bound.”

And finally she shows him her real smile, sudden and brilliant as sunrise, creasing her eyes almost shut. The knife flashes as she brings it down. Nerevar shuts his eyes—no one alive could fail to shut his eyes, forgetting the safe word—but feels only a slight tug as she cuts the bonds at his wrists and then his ankles. She slides off his body, leaving him free. 

He sits up, opening and closing his hands, and shrugging the stiffness out of his shoulders. The relief is overwhelming—from pain, from enforced stillness, from terror. He looks at Al-Esh, who tosses the knife into a corner with a clatter. She spreads her hands, and smiles.

Nerevar seizes her and pins her to the bed.

#

Al-Esh squirms beneath him, but Nerevar is stronger, and heavier. Without preamble he bears her down and pulls her knees apart. She locks her thighs around his waist and squeezes. Nerevar’s breath leaves him in an explosive grunt. She rolls them over and presses her thumbs to his windpipe, her hard little fingers clamping the great arteries to either side.

Adrenaline floods Nerevar’s veins. He wrenches her wrists apart, and shoves her off. He starts to get off the bed, but Al-Esh tackles him from behind. Her forearm encircles his throat, and her other arm locks it there, cutting off his breath. Nerevar elbows her in the ribs. Al-Esh lets go with a gasp of real pain, and he stands and turns around. 

She’s on her knees, breathing hard. Her blood-smeared chest heaves to the same rhythm as his own. She glares at him. She’s not fucking around, and Nerevar’s blood runs even hotter at the thought. For a moment images collide and conflict in his mind, and he can’t remember what he wanted. To fuck her, yes, to wrap his hands in her hair, to force her down. But he hesitates. He doesn’t… she threw away the knife, yes, but he doesn’t want…

But Al-Esh sneers at him, snarls, her lip lifting and curling in a feral grin, and Nerevar’s racing heart thumps hard. He grabs her thighs. His hands skid down her legs and catch in the hollow cup of her knees. He yanks her to the edge of the bed—she yelps—and rolls her onto her belly, bending her over. 

The pink-brown folds of her cunt flash before him and Nerevar’s groin throbs. He pushes her down with a hand between her shoulders. Al-Esh wriggles, snarling an obscenity in her own language. He pushes harder. With his other hand he shoves her legs apart, gets a thigh between them. He takes his cock in hand, and mounts her. Slides inside. 

And oh, she is sweet, just as he imagined; sweet and soft and wet as an overripe persimmon, all sun-warmed flesh and juices running down his chin. Nerevar closes his eyes briefly as her body swallows him up, and just listens to her sudden cry of outrage, the slap of his hips against her ass and his balls against her cunt, the wet, sloppy sound of his cock pistoning in and out. Blood trickles down the inside of his arm and wets his palm. He adjusts his grip on her hip and keeps going. 

“Oh,” he says. It comes out almost a sigh. It’s hard to speak, hard to make words. His voice is ragged in his own ears. “Oh,  _ fuck _ yes.”

“Animal,” Al-Esh snarls. Nerevar slaps her hip and she yelps. 

“Behave,” he says. 

She tries to straighten up, but this is grappling now, and Nerevar knows how to grapple. He slides his hand up to grab the back of her neck, and forces her face into the bed, muffling her curses. She chokes and flails back at him with one arm. Nerevar grabs her wrist and forces that down as well, bending over her. Her hair straggles damp across her neck. Sweat drips off his body and onto her back, mingled with his own blood. More sweat drips down his balls, or maybe her sexual fluids. She’s so wet inside that he can’t tell. 

But with his hand no longer on her back, Al-Esh twists beneath him—his cock slips out—and manages to kick him hard in the thigh, with her heel. Nerevar lets go of her with a grunt, narrowly avoiding another kick, aimed higher. Al-Esh scrambles up onto the bed. Nerevar tackles her, fumbles across her body, and manages to slam her onto her back. In a moment he has her legs apart and gets inside her again.

His sweat stings in every single one of the cuts she laid on him. His blood stains the white sheet beneath them. Al-Esh struggles to roll him again, but he braces himself and keeps fucking her. He crushes his mouth to hers and she bites him, hard. Nerevar jerks his head back, touching his lips. Blood wells in his mouth. 

“Bitch,” he says. 

“Pig,” she says back, and then flinches when he spits on her. Blood and saliva run down her cheek and into her hair.

“You don’t like it?” he says. He shifts his feet, braces them to slam into her harder. The bed creaks in protest. The lines cut into his thigh scream at him. He knots his hand into her hair, jerks her head back. Bites the side of her neck, right where throat meets shoulder. Al-Esh cries out and tries to gouge at his eyes with her thumbs. Nerevar catches her wrists and pins them above her head and doesn’t stop. She writhes beneath him like a snake, pulling at his hands, drumming her heels against his back and buttocks. He doesn’t stop. 

“You asked for this,” Nerevar grunts. “You wanted this. You wanted to fuck an elf.” 

“Pig,” she snarls again, almost crying. She adds several more statements in her own tongue, of which he only catches the obscenities:  _ blood-drinker, sister-fucker, dog. _

“Yeah,” he says in her language, panting hard. “I am a dog. And I’m  _ fucking _ a dog. A little… human…  _ bitch.” _

She bites his shoulder, hard, and Nerevar tightens his hands on her wrists until she screams. The sound resonates through his flesh. His balls tighten and his cock swells. He closes his eyes and fucks her even harder, trying,  _ seeking. _

When he comes, he comes so hard that it feels as if he might turn inside out, emptying not only his balls but his veins, his  _ spine, _ all his frozen bitterness and rage thawing like a mountain stream and spilling into wet, fertile, conquered earth. Nerevar can’t stifle a moan as he rides out his orgasm, and beneath it he hears Al-Esh whimper, solidifying his victory.

Nerevar lets his head drop, breathing hard. Al-Esh’s hands are gentle on his back and shoulders. Presently he takes his weight back onto his arms, and she loops her arms around his neck, warm and a little damp. 

“Are you all right?” he says. 

She pulls him a little closer and kisses him again. “More than all right.” 

Nerevar sighs in relief, and then realizes something. “You didn’t come.” 

“I enjoyed myself.” 

“That’s not… Aren’t I here for your pleasure, isn’t that the point? Here, let me—” 

“No,” she says. She squirms, and Nerevar closes his eyes as his hips jerk, pushing his still-erect cock further in. He fumbles his hand between them and she grabs his wrist. “No. Nerevar, Sard.  _ Sard.” _ He stops, and she drags his wrist away. 

“I don’t do that with strangers,” she says. She’s breathing hard. “That’s what I don’t do. I liked it. I’d tell you if I didn’t.” 

“Ah,” he says. He pushes himself up on his hands and pulls out. Cool air brushes his wet, oversensitized cock. He can hardly feel his legs. “There’s someone special? I’m sorry.”

She pauses, looking like a startled deer, and then relaxes. 

“It’s all right,” she says. 

“Do you cuddle, at least?” 

That gets a smile. “Yes,” she says. 

Nerevar relaxes beside her, and pulls her tight. Al-Esh snuggles against him, her back to his bloodied front, tucking herself neatly between his shoulders and the join of his hips. The heavy, sweet scent of jasmine still lingers in her hair, and Nerevar nuzzles past it to kiss the back of her neck. 

“You’re wonderful,” he mumbles. She lifts his hand and kisses his fingers. 

For some time they lie like that, and Nerevar idly plays with her breasts. They’re very nice breasts, and he rolls them in his hand, feeling her nipples harden like pebbles against his palm. He’s so relaxed that he keeps drifting off, his limbs twitching as he sinks toward sleep. 

“You’re special,” Al-Esh finally says, and he rouses. “You’re going to accomplish things. But I needed to show you the way.” 

“With knives,” Nerevar mumbles, which makes her laugh. “No, I understand. You need knives. It doesn’t work without knives. But you have to cut the right thing.”

“Perfect,” she says. She twists around in his arms and kisses his mouth. “Nerevar. When you go east again… don’t forget me?” 

“I won’t,” he promises. “No regrets?” 

“None.” 

The angle of the sunlight has changed when Al-Esh finally wriggles away and sits up.“I have to get ready,” she says. “For evening rites.” 

Nerevar sits up as well, his already-scabbing cuts tugging at his skin. Al-Esh rakes her fingers through her disheveled hair. Patches of brownish, drying blood flake off her body, and Nerevar looks down at himself. He’s a mess. 

“I need another bath,” he says. “And my clothes…?” 

“My guards are holding your belongings, they’ll be along soon.” 

“My brooch?” 

“Oh, that’s mine,” she says. Nerevar shakes his head and pretends to sigh, and Al-Esh ruffles his hair. “Something to remember you by,  _ kaketiu.” _

Nerevar catches her hand, and kisses the palm. 

“What does that word mean?” he says. “Something to do with elves? I hear it everywhere.” 

Al-Esh laughs. “It’s a bird,” she says. She purses her lips and whistles. A small yellow bird with pink cheeks flutters to the windowsill, then glides across the room to land on her outstretched hand. Nerevar stares at it, and then starts to laugh as well. 

The bird chirps at him and raises the crest of feathers on its head.

#

_ “So that’s that,” Dumac says. He leans back, tipping his chair onto two legs, and then rocks forward again and stands. “We drive out the Northmen and take back our land.” He extends his hand across the strategy table. “Together.”  _

_ Nerevar hesitates. This is the last step, the very last. He has united his own people behind him, and ended the infighting between clan and city-state and distrustful tribe. Just one more step and they will have strength enough to belong to themselves again, and not to shaggy roaring men. And yet he fears it will be the undoing of all he has wrought to attempt such a thing. There are reasons the Chimer and Dwemer have hated each other forever.  _

_ But he takes a deep breath and stands, shaking the memory of silk scarves off his hands, rolling an imagined kink out of his shoulders. His blood runs a little quicker as he thinks of the violence to come.  _

_ Nerevar Mora stretches out his hand, and clasps the broad hand of the Dwemer king.  _

_ “Together,” he says. _


End file.
